How far a year can bring you

I have been keeping a personal journal since the young age of 8-years-old. Back home I have a small shelf of journals dedicated to my preteens, middle school years, and high school, and in a box somewhere are the "college editions". This ritual, which I have kept alive for myself for almost two decades, has served so many purposes for my personal growth that I know even with growing technology, blogs, and everything becoming electronic, I will continue to write--pen to paper-- in a journal until I physically cannot anymore.

My cat, Shmoo, sitting on my journal in my room in the U.S. and wishing she had opposable thumbs and the ability to read  so as to uncover my deep dark secrets

Journaling helps me work out feelings, ideas, as well as take a topic and beat it into the ground (as I know those around me at some point would love that I just shut up about it already). It is my story board, personal therapy, and medium to express myself.

Sometimes, depending on where I am in life, I like to look back in my journals and see where I was on or around that particular date (I may be an avid journaler, but I cannot attest to writing every day, or even every week). This month, being one with a mixture of feelings with starting projects in my community, missing home, and realizing I am approaching the year mark in Peru, I decided to look back to see where I was as I readied myself to embark on this two-year journey. And, seeing as how I am not one to keep many secrets, I see no problem in sharing with all of you.

April 16, 2011  1:45 p.m.    On break while working at Interzone (coffee shop I worked at)

Over-caffeinated, shaking. Wobbly table, wild hair, jumpy stomach. Ordered food. I have no idea if I can eat it.

Peru. F%$*ing PERU! Can you imagine? I kind of can. Not really. I can't feel the fall air which will greet me. I can't feel the stiff bed, the awkward silence between host family and myself. I can only imagine a slew of odd feelings which will be replaced by the true experience in which I will be in awe and unknowing of how to gracefully handle.
....
What will I do with the stares, the cat calls, the bizarre comments? What will I do with the comments I don't understand? Will my clothes feel different? My skin? What will become of me?

Same day, 7:06 p.m.      Off work and still at Interzone

It's funny what grief will do to you. The methods of defense our body and mind come up with to deal with something beyond our grasp.

Not that leaving for the Peace Corps is something to grieve over, but knowing that I will be gone--the sense of unstoppable "disconnect" I will soon be experiencing is like grieving over a lost loved one.

At first shock, then denial, and for awhile now I've been angry, or exercising my frustrations based out of fear on those undeserving around me. I've felt depressed, lonely, this feeling that soon I will be very, very alone. ... Eventually I'll accept it, feel hope for my time away.

It is so incredibly overwhelming right now. How can I even describe the sheer panic and exhausting "readiness" I am trying to obtain but am blindly grasping for?

My relationships are suffering. My boyfriend and I are both trying to prepare ourselves for the loss and separation that is quickly approaching, but we can't do enough. Not while we have regular lives to lead. We are desperately hold on while distracting ourselves from the very thing we fear.

It is so exhausting, mind numbing, and sickening to go through. Like planning a break-up without wanting to, or without the guts to go through with it.

It just hurts. I mean, it physically hurts.

And they say coming home is the hardest part.

What mind-f%&$ roller coaster am I standing in line for?

My stomach has taken residence in my lower bowels, and my heart in my throat.

When will I no longer feel gripped with fatigue and nausea over the loss I will soon experience? The death of an era is steadily approaching.

But, the birth of a new one grows. And I suppose that is the "light at the end of the tunnel," the saving grace from the insanity. Life will spring anew, and my life will blossom under a new sun, a new day.

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Now, a year later in 2012, I think I am still too close to this experience to not be affected by these words when I read them, because those feelings were really strong. Leaving for Peace Corps was not easy. Arriving in Peru and starting intense training with a bunch of strangers was not easy. Continuing to be here and working within my community with roadblocks of poverty, machismo, and cultural differences is not easy.

But the part of all of this that was the hardest was the fear of the unknown. It was waiting for the blade to drop as I stepped on that plane and left my old life behind. I'm glad that I knew beyond all of these feelings there were opportunities for good things to come. That with the end of every era opens a new one.

While I often use my journals to look back, it is not so that I can be stuck in the past. I use these moments to realize how far I've come and as tools to help me to continue to move forward.

Peace Corps has been hard, from the moment I started applying to now. But, I wouldn't trade a minute of it. It was a grieving process to leave everyone and everything behind, but I know I will come back to them when this is all over and grieve over my part of Peru I'm leaving behind. And in looking back to how far I've come in a year, and how fast that time has gone by, I know the next year will come and go just as rapidly with just as many ups and downs (I was right about the mind-f$%# roller coaster!)

In the meantime, I'm glad I pushed through that fear and sadness so that I could come to this point in my life. My strength in the past is what brought me to the new challenges which make me even stronger.  I'm keeping my chin up, keeping the writing up, and looking forward to a time when all of these moments compile a story of the woman I'll become. And of course keeping in mind that it's not about the end of the journey, but the journey itself.